how the wine cellar capacity will affect the design?
As mentioned in the previous pages, the first step to constructing a new wine cellar is not to select a site or find those beautiful wine rack designs, but to clarify the demands that the wine cellar needs to meet – the capacity and function. To make it simpler, that means two questions:
- How much wine should be put into it?
- Is this wine cellar only for wine storage, or does it also provide space for people wine tasting, talking, and socialize in it?
From our experience, most cellar owners do have general ideas about the answers to the above questions after they decided to build a new wine cellar, though their answers may not be very clear. At this time, the wine cellar designer should help the owners to quantify the owner’s demand and adjust the wine cellar design accordingly.
The answer to the first question is the demand of the wine cellar capacity. And the theme of this article is how the capacity will affect the design of the wine rack.
For those have household wine cellar, it is not because there was a ready wine cellar in their house, so they will have a habit or hobby of tasting and storing wine. But because of the hobby or investment of wine, a (new) wine cellar is necessary to them. Therefore, even though the wine racks for the new wine cellar have not been designed yet, the owners have general (or even fixed) number about how many bottles and cases of wine they already own. And the wine racks will be designed according to it.
No.1 – The quantity of the existed wine determines the size of the wine rack (cellars)
A very important premise is the new-built wine rack or wine cellar should be able to store all the wine the owner wants to put into.
To estimate how many square meters of wine racks are need, we can roughly take an average number: 50 bottle/sqm. Though the number of wine bottles per square meter is different for various wine rack design, 50 bottles/sqm is an approximate reference value.
If there are just a dozen of bottles of wine, common fridge or pantry is much better than a special wine rack is not very practical.
If there are few dozens of bottles of wine, a wine fridge also make sense. Of cause, a wine rack – about 1-meter-wide by 1-meter-high is also suitable for them.
If there are more than 50 bottles, a wine fridge maybe not enough. A wine rack along the wall will be more practical. For example, if there are 80 bottles, that means a 1.6-square-meters wine rack is need. In this case, the wine rack will be fixed against the wall, but not a separated room.
When there are 200-400 bottles of wine, more wine racks are need and it’s not easy to fix them all along the wall. It’s more appropriate to make a small room or staircase into a wine cellar, separated from other rooms.
If there are more than 400 bottles, the wine cellar room size is almost like a common bedroom. The bigger wine cellar capacity required, bigger room and more wine racks are need.
As a reference, a wine cellar Ciematic done for an Australian household project this year, has a construction area of about 20 square meters, ceiling height 2.5 meters. There are about 68 square meters of timber wine racks densely placed and up to the ceiling. The total wine cellar capacity reaches 4000 bottles of wine. Besides, there are three passages and enough space for a long desk for wine tasting party.
No.2 – Bottled wine and boxed wine
In our case study pages, we will say the total capacity of a wine cellar, rather than to list how many standard bottles, magnum bottles, timber boxes it can store. There are various bottle sizes and various box sizes from different brands and producing areas. If we all list them out, it’s not easy to intuitively tell our readers the general capacity of the wine cellar in the case study.
When we discuss with the wine cellar owner about the wine rack design, we need to know the number and sizes of the existed wine bottles and boxes in the owner’s collection.
The basic wine rack designs are all suitable for the standard bottles (750ml). The design for magnum bottles (1500ml) is similar to the standard bottles. We can enlarge the space to fit the magnum. And for those large-size bottles, it’s better to keep them standing.
Boxed wine is better to be stored in box bins (i.e. shelves). The minimum net size of the box bin is according to the timber boxes dimensions. If the owner has several types of wine boxes, we need to customize the box bins for each type of boxes. And we also need to plan enough box bins (in different sizes if needed) in the whole wine cellar design. Therefore, if the owner has more boxed wine, the wine cellar seems to have more shelves.
In addition, the total wine cellar capacity should have at least 10% spare capacity reserved for the new wine purchased in the future.
During designing the wine cellar, it’s better that the owners tell us more information about their wine products, as well as the personal wine tasting habits and the furnishing style they preferred. This will help us to provide more suitable wine cellar products.
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